New Japan continued the New Japan Cup today with the beginning of the Quarterfinals.
Today’s event was held at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo and can be watched on demand on New Japan World. This was a Samurai! TV broadcast in Japan.
The announced paid attendance was 1351, a legit sellout.
Match 1: Sho & Yujiro Takahashi beat Kosei Fujita & Zack Sabre Jr. Takahashi pinned Fujita after Pimp Juice.
Match 2: Aaron Henare, Jeff Cobb, Great-O-Khan & Kyle Fletcher beat Oskar Leube, Ryusuke Taguchi, Tomoaki Honma & Togi Makabe. Fletcher pinned Leube after Grimstone.
Match 3: Toru Yano, YOSHI-HASHI & Hirooki Goto beat Satoshi Kojima, Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Tama Tonga. Yano pinned Tenzan.
Match 4: Lio Rush, Yoh & Tomohiro Ishii beat BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi & Shingo Takagi. Rush pinned BUSHI.
Match 5: Shota Umino, Ren Narita, El Desperado & Minoru Suzuki beat El Phantasmo, Chase Owens, KENTA & David Finlay. Suzuki pinned KENTA after a Gotch-style piledriver.
Match 6: New Japan Cup Quarterfinals: Mark Davis beat EVIL. As a result, Davis advances to the Semifinals. UPSET ALERT!!!
Main Event: New Japan Cup Quarterfinals: SANADA beat Tetsuya Naito. As a result, SANADA advances to the Semifinals. Afterwards, SANADA left LIJ and joined Just Four Guys (Taichi’s new post-Suzuki-Gun faction) and they now become Just Five Guys.
As a result of today, the first half of the Semifinals will be SANADA vs. Davis.
The next event is tomorrow at Act City Hamamatsu in Shizuoka with the remaining Quarterfinals-Umino vs. Finlay & Goto vs. Tonga. Because of SANADA defecting from LIJ there may be a change to Match 5 as he was supposed to be in an 8-man tag with LIJ. Most likely he and someone on the other side (Rush, Yoh, Yano, Tomohiro Ishii) get pulled to make it a 6-man tag but we’ll see. Live streaming on New Japan World will begin at 2:30 AM PT/5:30 AM ET.
In other news today, the 30th installment of Best Of The Super Junior, the annual prestigious showcase for Jr. Heavyweights worldwide, was announced for its traditional May spot on the calendar. This year it will run over 12 events from May 12-May 28. The full schedule:
5/12-Korakuen Hall
5/13-Nagano Prefectural Budokan, Nagano
5/14-Nagoya International Conference Center Event Hall, Nagoya
5/16-Akita Prefectural Budokan, Akita
5/17-Sendai Sun Plaza, Sendai
5/18-Iwate Prefectural Gym, Iwate
5/19-Maeda Sub Arena, Aomori
5/21-Korakuen Hall
5/23-Osaka Prefectural Gym, Osaka
5/24-Osaka Prefectural Gym Sub-Arena
5/26-Yoyogi National Gym 2, Tokyo
5/28-Ota City General Gym, Tokyo
UPDATE: A change has indeed been made for tomorrow as suggested above-SANADA is now out of the aforementioned 8-man tag. BUSHI is the replacement.
